Strategic Planning for Public Libraries is a complete planning toolkit. Each purchase comes with a downloadable supplemental folder full of reusable templates, worksheets, as well as real-life examples from other libraries to help guide the reader through the planning process. This book provides a framework that any library, whether it serves urban, suburban, or rural communities, can use as a basis for its strategic planning.
The PLA Results Series has long served to help public librarians envision, evaluate, and respond to community needs with distinctive programs and services. Building from this proven model, Strategic Planning for Results is the fully revised version of Planning for Results, the foundational book in this groundbreaking series. Sandra Nelson, senior editor of the Results Series, focuses on the essential steps to draft a results-driven, strategic planning process that libraries can complete over the course of four months, regardless of organizational structure or size. Reflecting on the current planning environment for public libraries, Nelson makes the case for strategic rather than long-term planning and includes a wealth of information about understanding and managing the change process to help staff Assess the change-readiness of the library and preparing staff to implement forthcoming changes Simplify data collection and decision-making processes through the use of 14 reproducible workforms Identify service priority options and reach agreement as a group Successfully present and communicate within their library Including the newly revised and adopted Public Library Service Responses, along with case studies, workforms, and tool kits, Strategic Planning for Results offers librarians a wealth of ideas to effectively meet changing community needs.
Libraries enter into strategic planning by a variety of routes, from dynamic technology and rising costs to budget cuts and pressure for change. In this book, Joe Matthews guides library managers towards a greater understanding of the role and attendant responsibilities of strategic planning. Academic, public, and special librarians alike will benefit from Matthews' cogent explanations, real-life examples, and time-tested recommendations. In the process, Matthews addresses such intrinsic questions as: Why is it important that I add strategic thinking to my managerial arsenal? How will strategic planning benefit my library, and is there more than one way to go about it? What is the best way of monitoring and updating our strategic plan for maximum effect? In each case, he debunks false impressions, attends to the goal of providing good service, and identifies at least one new way to communicate the library's strategic importance in the lives of its customers. Academic, public, and special librarians alike will benefit from Matthews' cogent explanations, real-life examples, and time-tested recommendations.
Written by a team of authors with decades of library administration experience between them, this powerful resource enables academic libraries to produce plans that will offer directional guidance to employees while also demonstrating the library's power to meet institutional goals.
Public libraries are increasingly aware of the need for good marketing. Underlying this is a need for competence in marketing planning. Many government and other reports stress the need to get public libraries back into the lives of their users and potential users and this requires significant marketing effort. However, it quickly becomes apparent to public librarians that marketing is far more than simply creating a set of leaflets for their marketing communications. What they need is a simple, practical guide to the whole marketing planning process from goals to implementation of marketing strategies and communications. And along the way they need to troubleshoot the barriers that such activities meet. This highly practical and down-to-earth book, with free downloadable templates and forms on the web, will de-mystify the marketing planning process and set it in the context of modern public library services. Through a series of easy to implement process steps and ideas the reader will see not just what is possible but what is likely to work quickly, and deliver real impact on performance indicators, in a public library context. The book is structured as follows: strategic marketing planning for public libraries: an introduction ambition as the basis for marketing planning making sense of the market for your public library services creating segment-specific value propositions for users and non-users priorities: making sound choices clear objectives and winning strategies attention-grabbing marketing communications implementation and quick progress. Readership: The text is fully international in scope and is written for all those practitioners who recognize the importance of marketing in shaping and positively influencing the direction of public library services.
More than just a compendium of management theories, this book provides much food for thought that will help readers gain important insights into their own roles as school library managers and leaders.
In these challenging times, libraries face fierce competition for customers and funding. Creating and implementing a marketing plan can help libraries make a compelling case and address both issues—attracting funding and customers by focusing on specific needs. But where and how do you start?
As we come to appreciate the opportunities that social media opens up, this practical guide provides a scalable, step-by-step plan for creating and maintaining a successful library social media strategic plan. You'll find detailed tips and advice on strategizing for social media services in a way that guides employee decision-making, maximizes efficiency, creates positive patron outcomes, protects against legal repercussions, and builds opportunities for flexibility, change, and new social media platform testing. Author Sarah Steiner guides you through the key steps to build your strategic plan, including how to segment your audience, select a target audience, use focus groups and poll patrons, conduct a SWOT analysis to provide internal strength and support to your plan, and create a mission and vision plan for using social media.
The concepts of planning and assessment are intrinsically linked—and understanding them is essential for raising the library’s profile and strengthening its position among stakeholders and the community. Even if you're an LIS student or are new to the profession, or if planning or assessment are not your primary areas of responsibility, you still have a role to play in the success of organizational efforts. Fleming-May has more than a decade of experience in planning and assessment initiatives and instruction, and Mays was her institution’s first assessment librarian; their primer draws from theory, research, and their first-hand observations to illuminate such topics as characteristics of bad planning strategy that can help to illustrate a better approach; reasons why using economic models, like ROI, fall short; how to mix the three types of planning; guidelines to ensure that assessment is meaningful and actionable; tips for creating effective surveys; emphasizing users’ needs with a critical assessment framework; data analysis for surveys, interviews, focus groups, and observation; four questions to ask about audience level before you develop a report; a sample 3-year assessment plan that can be customized; and seven steps for developing a culture of ongoing assessment.
Combine marketing and strategic planning techniques to make your library more successful! With cutting-edge research studies as well as theoretical chapters that have not been seen before in the marketing literature for LIS, this book examines the current and quite limited state of marketing by LIS practitioners and institutions. It provides you with examples of how marketing can be made more widely applicable within LIS and illustrates some of the usefulness of marketing in special LIS settings and contexts. The book explains how and why managers should combine marketing strategy with strategic planning and demonstrates the means by which LIS could move toward a more full-fledged use of marketingrelationship marketing and social marketing in particular. In order to be a more effective tool, Strategic Marketing in Library and Information Science is divided into two sections: The Basis and Context for Marketing (theoretical information) and The Application of Marketing (practical applications that you can put to use in your institution). Chapters cover: existing literature on marketing in LISwhat it has to offer and what it lacks strategic planning that must take place before marketing money is spent the branding process and how it can be helpful in LIS marketing a marketing method for bridging the gap between staffing needs and the current shortage of librarians a way to use relationship marketing techniques to respond to the challenge of marketing electronic resources marketing applications relevant to theological libraries the effective use of social marketing at the Austin History Centera fascinating case study! a fresh marketing approach to bridging gaps between cultural history and education the importance of marketing for public libraries
